The number of tourists 'staying' in Cambridge rose by 30,000 in two years, new figures reveal.

Statistics from Visit Britain show the number of tourists coming into the city for ‘staying visits’ rose from 404,000 in 2013 to 430,000 in 2015.

The data, based on an International Passenger Survey, Office for National Statistics, ranked Cambridge 10th in the top 20 towns for inbound visitors to Britain in 2015, while Oxford ranked seventh with 535,000.

London was top with 18,851,000, while Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow also featured in the top 10. Emma Thornton, chief executive of Visit Cambridge and Beyond which was set up a year ago to support tourism, in particular longer stays rather than day trips, said the figures were encouraging.

“Our vision is about really showcasing Cambridge and the surrounding area as a first class business and leisure destination,” she said.

“One of the key objectives is around changing people’s perception of Cambridge as a day trip destination.

“We still have a very high proportion of visitors that only stay for a day. These figures indicate that people are staying over and they are not just day visitors. That’s very encouraging. We want to encourage people this is a place to stay a few days and explore further.

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But city councillor John Hipkin, who represents Castle ward, said day trippers were still outstripping long stayers by a “considerable proportion”.

“Cambridge is rapidly becoming a city like Venice or Barcelona where tourism is now so dense and so pervasive and so intrusive that people who live in the city are being driven out,” he said. “They are leaving in large numbers.

“Tourism is changing the retail character of the city. Many shops are designed for this passing trade and fewer and fewer of them are designed for people who actually live in the city and want some useful local shops.

“I think instead of encouraging tourists we ought to have a strategy for changing the character of tourism. We want more people to stay over the longer term and fewer people who are day trippers. We’ve got too many of them, we’ve really got to take control of this.”